Woman's 'disgusting' discovery in shower: 'Can't imagine the smell'
The woman and her husband believe the previous renters were responsible for the 'dreadful' find in their shower.
A puzzled woman's mission to find out why "grime" kept seeping into her shower has led to a "dreadful" discovery.
Renter Julia Lang-Malone moved into a Gold Coast home owned by her in-laws with her husband and children in July last year, only to recently find something wrong in their ensuite shower.
"This has been scrubbed, it’s clean," she said in the viral TikTok, gesturing to the shower. "But I keep pouring water down here and this keeps coming out. Its like nicotine and tobacco and grime."
'Thousands' of cigarettes found in shower
Armed with some water, a tiny brush and wooden skewer, the determined Kiwi kept investigating until she discovered bucketloads of hidden cigarettes were responsible for the stench and grime.
"I think I've f***ing figured it out," she said in the video. "This b***h was dumping her cigarettes into this little square here [at the top of the hollow shower frame] so we now have an unlimited stash of cigarette butts in this thing." The woman has since videoed her husband half opening the hollow panel, where there were thousands of cigarettes inside. "Holy s**t," he says in disgust.
What's worse is the couple realised on Tuesday night that both shower frame panels, not just one, were used as "ash trays" and are filled with cigarettes.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Mrs Lang-Malone said the smell is "unfathomable" now that she's "disturbed all of the gunk in there". "It's really, really stinky," she said. "We’ve basically wrecked the whole shower — which is a bummer — to get access to the cigarettes, but we didn’t have much choice because it was so disgusting and we were desperate."
The hollow aluminium frame holding up the glass also seemed to have a hole at the bottom, leading to all the junk flushing out onto the bathroom tiles as well.
Previous tenants of Gold Coast home seemingly responsible
The previous tenants — who had a different landlord — are believed to be smokers, so when the couple moved in, they thought the nasty smell coming from the master bedroom was still "lingering" from the renters smoking in there "for ages".
"We just assumed the smell was embedded in the walls and the carpets and everything," Mrs Lang-Malone said. When asked why she thought the previous renters did it, she assumed "laziness". "Whats most annoying is there's a balcony two steps from the ensuite, but they’ve got thousands of cigarettes in the bathroom," she said.
'Nicotine dripping down the walls'
"They smoked in the whole house. All the carpet from the stairs to the second floor has turned green from nicotine and you can see it used to be blue," the mum continued.
"All the woodwork in the house house was yellow, the toilet was stained yellow, there’s nicotine dripping down the walls. I’ve never seen anything like it. And there's cigarettes burns in the carpet in the master bedroom."
Viewers react to 'nasty' cigarette discovery
Many people have been following Ms Lang-Malone on her journey, with her videos receiving more than 8.5 million views in total. "Can't imagine the smell," one person commented on TikTok. "That is so nasty. Who does that?" another said. "The disrespect to do that to someone else's home. Sorry you have to deal with the mess!"
Mrs Lang-Malone said she and her husband will now start the process of removing the glass panels to try and clean the cigarettes out.
"We've been slowly renovating and fixing... its pretty gross how they left it," she told Yahoo. "Hopefully we'll be able to just gut it and put a shower curtain in or something. We’re planning to stay here for the next 20 years with our kids. I want to do it right."
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